The present invention, in some embodiments thereof, relates to a system and method for reducing mobile network signaling.
Mobile networks currently undertake a large amount of signaling. By the term signaling is meant all the background and overhead communication beyond the actual calls and data of the users. The increase is related to the increasingly wide distribution of smart phones and smart phone usage which is typified by large scale use of applications, each application having overhead and adding to the total of data. Chat applications for example are based on numerous albeit short but mobile data iterations. The increase in data usage per se increases the signaling that is required to handle the data.
The amount of signaling has risen significantly with the advent of smart phones, and is now set to increase even more with the introduction of the Internet of Things. The Internet of Things generally involves small devices with embedded SIMS, that monitor and occasionally communicate. The devices tend to be imported with SIMs already included, the SIMS being pre-registered, typically in the country of manufacture or another convenient location, but not usually the country of import, and thus spend their lives in permanent roaming, with all the associated overheads, wherein the overheads involve international signaling. In the Internet of Things it is often preferred to use SIMs and the cellular network directly over a local Wifi network since local Wifi may not always be available and even if Wifi is available the device would need to be configured with the local Wifi and potentially cross a local enterprise firewall. In case of moving things, such as vehicles, the amount of signaling is much larger, because of frequent location updates, but for the most part there is very little payload traffic from these devices. In case of roaming all the update locations need to be sent over the International connections to the home network on which the device SIM is registered, and the provider has to pay for the international signaling on the basis of very little revenue. As an example, a large mobile network recently found that 20% of their signaling is from machine-to-machine devices. As the Internet of things grows it becomes more and more necessary to reduce the signaling.
As part of the overhead, data sessions are often initiated with an update location transaction, and this is particularly common if the device is not registered in the serving MME or MSC, or if synchronization has been lost. In 3G signaling, some handsets always initiate a data session with a MAP Update Location procedure. The update locations are, however, just part of the problem.
One of the biggest parts of the update location is the user profile. In roaming use, the profile is sent from the home network to indicate to the roaming network how to handle the user. The ETSI communication standards provide for an optional field in the update location request to indicate that the roaming network already has the profile and therefore it does not need to be sent. The field is used in a method known as the ETSI Supercharger. In the supercharger, a visitor location register (VLR) at the roaming network, retains a user profile once first requested. In subsequent location updates the field is used to indicate to the home network only to send the user profile in the event of a change since the last update. The Home location register, (HLR) is required to keep track of whether the profile has changed since the last send of the profile.
In order to implement the supercharger, changes are required to be made to the VLRs and HLRs (or the 4G MME and the HSS, respectively) and integration is required between the two networks. However, the HLR's and VLR's are difficult and expensive to access, and in particular, there may be numerous VLR's per network each of which would have to be accessed independently. The HLRs and VLRs are furthermore considered as critical elements which cannot be allowed to fail and hence any changes are required to be thoroughly tested. Furthermore VLR capacity is limited—most VLRs were constructed before the days of the smartphone, and additional loading of the VLR, which may run the danger of reducing VLR availability, is not encouraged. That is to say, any addition to a VLR runs the risk of causing a system crash. As a result there has been virtually no uptake of the Supercharger, despite the clear need. In general, it is not recommended for the HLR to carry out all kinds of applications, as it is the most critical element of the mobile network.